The Versatile Soliton [Paperback]

In this engaging book, the concept of the soliton is traced from the beginning of the last century to modern times with its recent applications.If you have not already heard about solitons, you will sooner or laterencounter them.The soliton, a solitary wave impulse preserving its shape andstrikingly similar to a particle, is one of the most fascinating andbeautiful phenomena in the physics of nonlinear waves. In thisengaging book, the concept of the soliton is traced from the beginningof the last century to modern times, with recent applications inbiology, oceanography, solid state physics, electronics, elementaryparticle physics, and cosmology.The main concepts and results of theoretical physics related tosolitons can be explained without using much mathematics. Indeed, onthe descriptive and historical level, only some knowledge of highschool physics and mathematics is needed. At a higher level, forunderstanding the elementary theory of oscillations and waves, thereader can intuit much from the numerous illustrations and perhapsskip the formulas presented. But to appreciate the deep connectionsin this book between apparently different and diverse phenomena andideas, the reader must be able to follow elementary mathematicalcomputations. Still more advanced mathematics is required for theappendices.An Early History of the Soliton.- A Century and a Half Ago.- The Great Solitary Wave of John Scott Russell.- Relatives of the Soliton.- Nonlinear Oscillations and Waves.- A Portrait of the Pendulum.- From Pendulum to Waves and Solitons.- The Present and Future of the Soliton.- Frenkels Solitons.- Rebirth of the Soliton.- Modern Solitons.

From the reviews:

The Versatile Soliton is an appropriate title indeed. There is much new historical information in the book&The book is written in a lively language and the physics presented in a clear, pedagogical style. Most of the chapters require only knowledge of flc<